Where do you put your attention?

In thinking about why I am attending this Critical Literacies course, at a time when I should probably be focussing elsewhere, I realised that one reason is that I would like to know more about how to manage learning in an online networked environment. Sometimes, it hits me hard that I am seriously short of the necessary skills!

This is a longish presentation by Howard Rheingold, who has a lot to say about 21st century literacies but principally about where you put your attention. I would agree that this is a critical literacy.

Also relevant to this is a post that George Siemens has made on his blog today. ‘Does the internet make you dumber/smarter?’ because I think it’s not just a question of ‘where you put your attention’, but ‘how you put your attention’ and I suppose that is what a lot of this course is about.